Les femmes de l'ombre

One of the inspirations for the film came when director Jean-Paul Salomé read "The Times" in London one morning whilst on post-production of Arsène Lupin (2004). Salomé saw a full page devoted to Lise Villameur, a French Resistance agent who worked for the SOE, the Special Operations Executive created by Winston Churchill during the Second World War. She had just died at the age of 98. She had been a real heroine and Britain paid tribute to her. Intrigued by her story, Salomé started doing some research with the help of historian Olivier Wieviorka. Salomé discovered that other women had been SOE agents. They were among the fifty or so agents of the "French Section" that were trained in England before working for the Allies in occupied WWII France.

The film portrays events leading up to the events of D-Day, yet the aircraft parachuting the girls into France displays invasion stripes, which were painted onto aircraft at the time of the D-Day landings to ease recognition of Allied aircraft.